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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

10 Inventions We Have War to Thank For

As Tolstoy once said, “War,
what is it good for?” Well, if the past is an indicator, it seems to
bring about something in human nature. War inadvertently brings with it
this need to create something better, and the need to research new
technologies to solve problems, which in turn brings about some very
unexpected results and innovations. While some may be a little unusual
and surprising, others can be life changing. Here are some inventions we
have war to thank for.

10. Margarine

You can thank Napoleon III (not that one; this was his nephew) for this invention. Margarine was invented by Hippolyte Mege-Mouries,
when Napoleon wanted a butter substitute to feed to his soldiers and
the poor in his empire due to the fact that butter was expensive. He
offered a prize to the person who could come up with a butter substitute
for his army. Meges-Mouries presented Napoleon with his butter
substitute, which he called margarine.

Napoleon was looking for a substitute that was cheap, spread and
tasted like butter, and lasted longer than the real thing, and
Meges-Mouries’s margarine did just that. Yet at the time, this creation
did not become popular. It wasn’t until Meges-Mouries sold the patent to
a Dutch butter making company that margarine took off. Sadly,
Meges-Mouries did not profit from his discovery and died a poor man in
1880, living long enough to see his margarine become internationally famous.

9. Canned Food

The tins of peas, carrots, and other random vegetables that you eat
with your dinner all owe their existence, at least in part, to war.
Nicholas Apparent can be thanked for providing the foundation for canned
food. It was late in the 18th century, when Napoleon Bonaparte offered a prize to any person that could come up with a way to successfully preserve food.
Apparently when he wasn’t invading Russia during winter, Napoleon and,
as noted in the above entry, his family liked staging random food
contests and would have fit in nicely on Shark Tank. Anyway,
older, traditional methods for food storage didn’t preserve items long
enough and Napoleon needed a way to send food to France’s armies all
around the globe.

Napoleon offered 12,000 francs to anyone who could do this. Appert won the prize with his process and laid down the foundation for modern tinned foodstuff. His process
involved heating food in sealed glass jars and bottles placed in
boiling water. This process was then built upon by numerous inventors,
eventually giving way to the tin can and your can of peas.

8. Silly Putty

Silly Putty is yet another accidental byproduct of war, and
specifically the research that goes into the wartime effort. It was
during World War II that silly putty came into existence. The war had
left many resources in short supply, one of these being rubber. The U.S.
military needed an inexpensive substitute,
because rubber was vital in the war effort as it was used in tires,
boots, rafts, and gas masks. In 1943, scientist James Wright was
researching synthetic rubber when he combined
Boric acid with silicone oil. The result was literally a glob of goo.
After experiments on the substance, Wright concluded that it was useless
as a substitute for rubber, but found that the material could bounce,
stretch farther than normal rubber and had a very high melting point.

It wasn’t until after the war that Silly Putty came into its own. It proved to be a huge hit with children around the world, and even adults found uses for the substance, using it to fix things around the house. Silly Putty was even brought to space by the astronauts during the Apollo 8 mission.

7. The Slinky

In 1943, engineer Richard James was working on a system
that would be used to stabilize and support sensitive equipment on
board ships in rough seas during war. The Slinky started out as a
spring, or a tension spring, to be more exact. At some point during his
project James knocked over a box of springs he was using. This box
contained a tension spring, and as he started to pick up the springs he
noticed that the tension spring seemed to keep moving, almost as if it
was walking. And so, the Slinky was born.

James and his wife saw the potential of the Slinky as a children’s
toy, and began to market it that way. At first sales were slow but at
Christmas of 1945, Gimbels department store allowed James to demonstrate
his new toy. Within 90 minutes, the first 400 Slinkys were sold.

6. The Jerry Can

The jerry can was a German invention
developed in the 1930s for military use at the start of World War II.
The Germans called it Wehrmachtskanister. They saw the importance of
being able to carry fuel and water and by the time WWII came about,
they had stockpiled
thousands of these in anticipation for the conflict. These jerry cans
turned out to be far superior to their Allied counterparts; they were
robust, durable and easy to transport.

The original design featured an ‘X’ on each side, allowing room for
expansion and adding strength to the structure. On the top of the can
were three handles, making it easier to pass from one person to another
and also allowing two cans to be carried side by side in one hand. When
the U.S. military was informed of the invention they ignored it, but it
eventually found its way to Camp Holabird, where it was reverse engineered and redesigned.

5. The Microwave

The microwave is another member of the accidental invention group. The potential of microwaves was realized by Percy Spencer, who was researching radar technology. Spencer was working on magnetrons one day when he noticed that a chocolate bar
that he had in his pocket had begun to melt. Spencer, who worked for
the company Raytheon at the time, realized the potential of this
discovery.

After more experimentation Spencer realized that this microwave
technology could be concentrated to cook food quicker than a normal
oven. Raytheon produced the first microwave in 1947. It was large, expensive, and not very popular.
It wasn’t until sometime later, when microwaves became smaller and more
affordable, that they rose in popularity. If it wasn’t for the war and
the research into radar and microwave technology, Spencer may not have
stumbled onto the invention that changed kitchens forever. And speaking
of radar technology…

4. Radar Systems

The idea of radar was around before World War II but it was in that war that the first practical radar system was developed by Robert Wattson-Watt.
Wattson-Watt developed the technology when a series of radar related
discoveries allowed him to do so. Wattson-Watt built on these
discoveries and realized that he could use radio transmitters to create
an echo off of an airplane by bouncing radio waves off of it. This plane
could be over 100 miles away, yet the echo would return.

Wattson-Watt presented this information to the Royal Air Force,
and believed that this technique could give the RAF an early warning
system to alert them of the threat of incoming planes. This radar
allowed the Air Force to see when the enemy was coming, and not only
that, but how many planes and how far away they were. This meant that
the enemy lost the element of surprise. This invention helped turn the Battle of Britain in favor of the RAF.

3. Sanitary Pads

Yes, you’ve got war to thank for disposable sanitary pads, too.
Although throughout history menstrual pads have been used, and made from
various materials like cotton and fur, it wasn’t until World War I that
nurses in France realized the bandages they were using on the injured
soldiers could be used for their own personal use.
These particular bandages were made from a combination of wood pulp,
fibers, and other materials, a combination that made them much more
absorbent than normal cotton bandages. They became popular with nurses
because they were readily available, much more absorbent, and very
cheap, which meant that the bandages could be simply thrown away when
they were no longer, um, “useful.”

The Kimberly Clarke Corporation
that supplied these bandages to the nurses during the war was left with
a surplus of bandaging after WWI, and used the nurse’s idea to create
the first disposable pads.

2. Super Glue

Super glues
(otherwise known as cyanoacrylates) were discovered in 1942. Contrary
to popular belief, super glues were not specifically invented to glue
wounds together during battle, but were in fact an accidental invention
created by Harry Coover. Coover was actually attempting to create a
clear plastic gun sight to be used on rifles by the Allies. It was during his research
into these sights that he stumbled onto the formula that eventually
became Super Glue, yet due to the fact Coover was working on making
sights for guns he considered the sticky substance useless and threw it
aside. It wasn’t until some years later while working on another project
that he and a colleague discovered the formula for the second time.

At this stage Coover was working for a company called Eastman Kodak.
Coover and his colleague, Fred Joyner, realized the commercial potential
of this formula due to the fact it stuck to just about everything.
Although not specifically invented for sealing wounds, Coover’s
invention would go on to do just that. During the Vietnam War, Super
Glue was reportedly used to seal the wounds of injured soldiers to prevent them from bleeding out until they could get to a hospital to be stitched up.

1. Duct Tape

Duct tape came about during the Second World War, after the U.S.
military needed a way to safely seal ammunition cases while also keeping
the moisture out. It was created by a division of the Johnson and
Johnson Company, which used medical tape as a base and applied a couple
of new technologies to create a tape that was durable and waterproof.
They used a rubber adhesive, and the polyethylene coating allowed them
to stick a cloth backing onto the tape. The result was the water
repelling tape that we know and use for basically everything imaginable
today. Soldiers came to refer to it as “duck tape” during the war,
partly due to its ability to have water simply roll right off of it.

The versatility and durability of duct tape allowed it to continue to
sell after the war. The makers of the tape changed its name from duck
to duct, and changed the color of the tape from army green to the grey
we see it as now, both due to the fact that after the war, duct tape was
used to repair air conditioning ducts in homes, and these ducts were grey in color.